Briefing: re-engineering the city 2020–2050 – urban foresight and transition management

Cities may be responsible for up to 70% of global carbon emissions and 75% of global energy consumption and by 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world's population could live in cities. The critical challenge for contemporary urbanism, therefore, is to understand how to develop the knowledge, capacity and capability for public agencies, the private sector and multiple users in city regions systemically to re-engineer their built environment and urban infrastructure in response to climate change and resource constraints. Re-Engineering the City 2020–2050: Urban Foresight and Transition Management (Retrofit 2050) is a major new interdisciplinary project funded under the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council's (EPSRC) Sustainable Urban Environments Programme which seeks to address this challenge. This briefing describes the background and conceptual framing of Retrofit 2050 project, its aims and objectives and research approach.

City futures: exploring urban retrofit and sustainable transitions

Cities are responsible for up to 70% of global carbon emissions and 75% of global energy consumption. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world's population will live in cities. The critical challenge for contemporary urbanism, therefore, is to understand how to develop the knowledge, capacity and capability for public agencies, the private sector and multiple users in city-regions (i.e. the city and its wider hinterland) to re-engineer systemically their built environment and urban infrastructure in response to climate change and resource constraints. To inform transitions to urban sustainability, key stakeholders' perceptions were sought though a participatory backcasting and scenario foresight process in order to illuminate challenging but realistic socio-technical scenarios for the systemic retrofit of core UK city-regions. The challenge of conceptualizing complex urban transitions is explored across multiple socio-technical ‘regimes’ (housing, non-domestic buildings, urban infrastructure), scales (building, neighbourhood, city-region), and domains (energy, water, use of resources) within a participatory process. The development of three archetypal ‘guiding visions’ of retrofit city-regional futures developed through this process are discussed, along with the contribution that such foresight processes might play in ‘opening up’ the governance and strategic navigation of urban sustainability.

Social housing in Latin America: Red Road flats of tomorrow?

The article revises latest social housing developments in Brazil and Chile and questions their ability to deliver liveable places.

Operating a studio within a research culture: the urban heart surgery design research forum

The question of whether or not design can be considered research has perplexed schools of architecture ever since they were first introduced into universities. It was at the center of the Oxbridge union debates in the early 1900s. It formed one of the corner stones of the Oxford conference on education organized by the RIBA in 1958 (Martin 1958) and came under scrutiny again in the UK with the introduction of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 1992. While the arguments both for and against are considerable1, “in order to understand the questions and the possibilities of architectural research and to respond to the difficulties that confront us now, we have to have a model which acknowledges what schools of architecture really are, and could be, and then work with that” 2.
Drawing on professionally oriented research models, such as qualitative ‘clinical research’, from Medicine and the Health Sciences - where the processes of exploration, observation, investigation, recording and communication are conducted in-situ by the ‘practitioner-as-researcher’ 3 - the following paper outlines an initiative introduced in 1999, referred to as the ‘Urban Heart Surgery’ 4. The program actively integrates students entering their second degree program into a studio based design research culture and allows them to engage in critical discourse by working on high profile strategic design projects in three areas significant to Victoria’s future growth: Metropolitan Urbanism, Urbanism on the Periphery, and Regional Urbanism.
With a growing core of industrial and community based partnerships, including: four regional councils (Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong and Warrnambool) and three metropolitan municipalities (Melbourne City, Port Phillip and Wyndham), the forum actively facilitates a graduate/practice research agenda through the ARC linkage grant program.

Future Asian space : projecting the urban space of new East Asia

The idea of "Asian space" is undergoing a transformation as a result of rapid technological, economic, social and cultural changes. Following the shift to a global economy and an urban population explosion, Asian cities have been presented as a mainstay of progress, national pride, identity, and positioning on the global stage. The extraordinary pace and intensity of the changes have created a situation unique in the history of urban development. Despite the immense diversity of Asian countries, "Asia-ness" is often treated as a distinctive quality that has emerged from unique recent circumstances affecting Asian urbanizations as a whole. In Future Asian Space, 15 authors explore broad concepts relating to the creation and re-creation of "Asian space" and contemporary Asian identity, and their examination of different sites and research approaches highlights the difficulty of pinpointing what Asia-ness is, or might become. Appropriate design and planning of cities is a critical element in building a sustainable future and coping with environmental, social and cultural problems. Future Asian Space is designed to stimulate interest and engagement in discussions of the Asian city, and its trajectories in architecture and urbanism. The authors' conclusions are important for academics, theorists and practitioners, but they will also intrigue anyone interested in the future of cities and urban life in Asia.

Urbanheart surgery - a logic of design alternatives

In 1972 Sir Leslie Martin in his essay “The Grid as Generator”, advocated “a strong theoretical basis for [planning and] urban design” (Carolin P, 2000, p4) by methodically shifting design parameters regarding the way “in which buildings [could be] placed on the land” Martin was able to demonstrate how the generation of alternatives could “allow wider scope for decisions and objectives” to be considered and discussed (Carmona M, & Tiesdell S 2007, p81). Operating within a conventional design studio yet drawing of Sir Leslie Martin’s logic, ie developing an informed understanding of a problem by identifying a finite world of design ‘alternatives’, the following paper outlines a studio based program at the School of Architecture and Building, Deakin University, referred to as the ‘UrbanHeart Surgery’. While most atelier-based courses operate largely on an ad-hoc basis where students often work within self imposed competitive isolation, Urbanheart adopts a more open yet structured approach where students work in design collaboratives to generate a matrix of alternative design scenarios. The program actively integrates postgraduate students from Architecture, Urban Design and Planning into a design research culture and allows them to engage in critical discourse by working on strategic design projects in three areas significant to the future development of the state of Victoria: Metropolitan Urbanism, Urbanism on the Periphery and Regional Urbanism.

MidiCities : test beds for innovative delivery of urban transformation

Cities globally and nationally are facing a range of daunting challenges to respond to a suite of emerging imperatives including a low carbon future, oil vulnerability, demographic re-composition, and the prospect of unpredictable economic shocks. To pursue a future that is sustainable and resilient requires substantial transformation of existing urban areas and creation of new mechanisms to guide and manage delivery of physical, economic and social changes.

Mid-sized cities provide legible, nimble test beds for exploring cross-disciplinary models and innovative governance and delivery techniques. Australia’s ‘MidiCities’ – home to 4 million urban dwellers frequently overlooked by urban policy or research effort – are emerging as crucibles of innovation and experimentation. Most of these cities retain that essential key ingredient for sustainable urbanism, economic resilience and community identity: a strong, highly legible city centre with a tightly clustered diversity of facilities and functions – the multi-functional activity centre that metropolitan suburban hubs yearn to grow up to become!

These diverse MidiCities are passing a threshold of self-confident sophistication, and are now providing valuable lessons for each other, which could be adopted or adapted by metropolitan cities where scale and complexity can often overwhelm the search for new and appropriate approaches to delivery of rapid change while maintaining clear guidance toward the vision of a ‘preferred’ future. A network of professionals working with Australian and New Zealand MidiCities is coalescing toward a cross-disciplinary platform for exchange of experiences and information, mutual support, improved research and understanding, capacity-building and the refinement of new specialist skills and structures.

A parametric approach to 3D massing and density modelling

This paper addresses the current void between social agendas, environmental criteria and design methodology in urban planning through the implementation of new computational systems. It considers the application of digital design tools such as GIS and parametric systems towards more efficient and effective design solutions. The digital design methods have been developed and tested within Grimshaw Architects Design Technology Group on both Australian and international urban development projects. A methodology for the use of parametric design for urban design development is suggested for defining, simplifying and categorising planning and design strategies. The following tools are a means of generating urban design concepts as digital forms in order to better inform the designer during the design process.

Alterations

Alterations
A project conceived by Paul Carter, Professor of Design / Urbanism, Architecture & Design, that explores the theme of 'Alterations' in clothes, identities and spaces. The project is inspired by Dandenong's rapidly mutating public and commercial spaces and the multicultural communities that animate them. The project features a multi-monitor video work Loops, textile-based installation, documentary photography, and poster manifestos. Artists featured include Dirk de Bruyn, Ed Carter, Paul Carter and Soo Yeun You.

The geo-historical legacies of urban security governance and the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

In 2004, the discourse of ‘legacy’ was woven into the constitutional fabric of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Bidding for Olympic events is now premised on procuring post-event legacies that will resonate through local communities and host countries long after the flame is extinguished. Given vast expenditures in security, policing, and emergency management operations at major sporting events, it is notable that the IOC and its official partners have disproportionately under-represented security and policing legacies. This paper addresses research into security and policing legacies of major events by turning much needed empirical attention towards institutional level geographies of security and policing – particularly on legacies of policing and militarisation in Olympic host cities. Accordingly, the paper traces the institutional trajectory of the Military Liaison Unit (MLU) in the Vancouver Police Department who were heavily involved in coordinating the joint civilian–military effort throughout the lifecycle of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. Theoretically, the paper furthers Stephen Graham’s (2010) New Military Urbanism that considers the circulation of military expertise between neo-colonial frontiers of military intervention with Western urban spaces. In doing so, this paper unpacks an empirically guided temporal approach that discerns key drivers of militarisation as localised, empirical-based ‘trajectories’ of development of security and policing institutions, which are linked to, and circumscribed by, critical juncture episodes in the context of mega event security. The paper traces processes of the MLU to explain how conditions underpinning the civil–military divide in urban policing, as a series of jurisdictional, institutional, and by extension, geographical configurations have continued, changed or been abandoned in the context of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. As such, this paper contributes to much needed debate on the controversies and opportunities inherent in security legacies and major events, which implicate the wider securitisation and militarisation of Western cities.

O contrato de gestão em busca de um modelo para empresas de obras especiais - EMPROE-U.E.E

The present dissertation target, is to analyze the application viability of the administration contract at the Public Administration in a general and concomitantly order, to simulate a contract of Administration for a Special-Works Enterprise - Economical State Unity - EMPROE - U.E.E , pointed out the importance of this, for the immediate Political-Social and economical situation that Angola hindes on the domain of Public-Works and Urbanism taking account the theoretical developed on the following chapters. At the first chapter, seeked to supply brief datas about what have been done at several sectors ofthe angolan economy. At the second chapter, particularizedly describes the historical evolution of the Manageral ambience from Angola. At the third chapter we did mention to the concepts and thecnical aspects of the Strategical Administration and the concepts, origins, and the Administration characteristics by Objectives. The fourth chapter handles about the origin of the Administration Contracts, according of his historic/concept at the evolution agreement procedures. At the fifth chapter doing some considerations about the Brazilian Experience of Administraion contracts, particularizing cases from C.V.R.D. , from Petrobrás and the implantation skill of the Administration contracts for the State Govemments of São Paulo. At the sixth chapter allude to the American Experince in Administration contracts had the flexibility and the Institute of "W AIVER" as reference. At the seventh chapter dials of the Angolan Experience at the Administration contracts, just as reference to the Beers Nacional Enterprises - CERV AL. The eighth presents a contract simulation of Administration between the EMPROE-U.E.E and the MINOPU, focalizing the Strategical function, mission and the luridical instruments, according to a specific model. The ninth and the last one chapter do some inherences to the analysis of the contracts viability of Administration and some suggestions for the Enterprise as a conclusion.

The historic religious buildings of Ribeira Grande: implementation of christian models in the early colonies, 15th till 17th century, on the example of Cape Verde Islands

Rui Carita

A cidade e o idoso

This thesis concerns the study of the city and impacts that will be caused in its structure due to the aging process of the human society, mainly in Brazil. The most important focus will be those related to problems of accessibility, leisure, housing, health and labor, issues that most affect people over 60 years of age. Beyond the analysis of inherent problems to the subject, proposals will be made for urban intervention that the cities become more suitable for the living of the elderly. To support this study, a review of different theories about the city was carried out, then a panel about the presence of the elderly in society, including Brazil, and in the cities, aiming at a vision, as broad as possible, on how the elderly were treated throughout history. In order to establish paradigms and parameters in the approach to the subject, a series of systematic observations on the urban space in different cities proceeded, in Brazil and abroad, with works aiming the inclusion of the elderly in urban areas, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brasilia, Luanda and Rio de Janeiro, a city considered by the UN as physical and territorial urban laboratory suitable for the elderly. From there we tried to obtain, in addition to literature and observation of other countries experiences, the conduct of field research and official standards analysis, the theoretical basis for establishing guidelines on how to plan and design a more appropriate urban space for the elderly

Henri Lefebvre: possibilidades teórico-metodológicas para Arquitetura e urbanismo

This paper presents the theoretical-methodological possibilities of the French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, for the discipline of architecture and urbanism in an effort to overcome the fragmentation imposed by the institutionalization of science in general. From Du rural à l'urbain (Lefebvre, 1970) compilation, it brings the author's other works from the period between 1968 and 1974, indicating the conduits for reflection and their interrelationships with methods, types of analyses and other procedures to treat the space-time urban. The methodology involves a research on the author s 'today and yesterday' in the scientific field, a research and analysis of his procedures in highlight of philosophical, social, economic and political aspects, the historical context of his references and provides significant and possible elements for the study, research and extension in the area in question